Forgery and Counterforgery: The Use of Literary Deceit in Early Christian Polemics (49 page)

More than anywhere else, the key passage of Eph. 2:1–10 provides individual statements that seem, on the surface, to carry Pauline resonances, yet reveal themselves upon closer reflection to be strongly non-Pauline. The salvific pattern set forth here is often touted as vintage Paul: believers who were dead in their sins and alienated from God are made alive only by God’s own gracious act in Christ, to be received by faith, not by “works,” so that there is now no ground for boasting. Once the patina of Pauline phrases is scratched, however, the alien character of the passage is clearly shown. The historical Paul insisted in his own letters that before coming to Christ he was completely “blameless” with respect to the “righteousness that is in the Law” (Phil. 3:6). How could he now turn and say that he, like the pagans around him, followed “the passions of the flesh, the desires of body and mind?” Some such view may come from a misreading of Romans 7, but not from the pen of Paul talking about his own past. How could Paul, who insisted that believers “will be raised” with Christ, with an emphasis on the future state,
declare that believers have already been raised and are in fact currently “seated in the heavenly places” with Christ, in a position of rule and authority removed from the evil forces of this world? How could Paul refer to the act of salvation as a completed event (“you have been saved”) when for Paul salvation was an event to be eagerly expected, yet to come?
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Most important, in a letter dealing principally with the relation of Jew and Gentile in the body of Christ, how could the historical Paul speak of being saved by faith, and not by “good works”? Good works? Of course, Paul himself had no qualms about good deeds or the people who performed them; nor, obviously, did this author (2:8–10). But what has that to do with the Pauline view of justification? Paul’s concern, especially in contexts of soteriology and the relationship of Jew and Gentile, was entirely with works “of the Law.” Paul’s own insistence that Gentiles do not need to keep the “works” of Jewish Law has somehow become transmuted into a claim that no one can be “good enough” to merit salvation. For Paul the issue was not moral probity; it was Jewish Law. This author has either very much misunderstood Paul’s language or has rewritten it for a new situation, in which the words may sound similar but in fact mean something very different.

That the author was living after Paul is suggested by statements that may represent unintentional slips. And so, for example, in 2:20, the author speaks of the “apostles” as a founding group for the church, without any recognition that Paul himself was one of the constituent members of the group. Moreover, for Paul, Christ is not the “cornerstone” of the church: Christ himself (not the prophets and apostles”) is the foundation (1 Cor. 3:11). Finally, and yet more striking, this author indicates that the central teaching of the gospel, that the Gentiles are to be joint heirs in the body of Christ with Jews, was “revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit” (Eph. 3:5). But is he not missing something rather crucial? Paul thought that he himself was the one to whom this insight was supremely revealed. He was the apostle to the Gentiles, and he was the one who had to convince others.

There are, in short, numerous imponderable difficulties in thinking the letter to the Ephesians authentic. At the same time, one of the other striking features of the book is the lengths to which the author goes in order to make the letter sound like Paul’s—in fact, to insist to his readers that he really is Paul. Obviously he names himself in 1:1 (no coauthor here), and uses a Pauline letter opening (1:1–2). The structure of the letter is, for the most part, Pauline (with the one key exception mentioned above) and it uses dozens of “Pauline sounding” words, phrases, and ideas. Apart from that, the author makes an inordinate number of self-references: “I Paul, a prisoner of Christ Jesus on behalf of you Gentiles” (3:1); “You have heard of the stewardship of the grace of God given me” (3:2); “how the mystery was made
known to me by a revelation” (3:3); and “my understanding of the mystery” (3:4). He declares: “I was made a minister of this gospel … by the grace of God given to me” (3:7). He refers to himself as “the very least of all the saints” but claims that “grace was given [to me] to preach to the Gentiles” (3:8). He speaks of “my afflictions on your behalf” (3:13). He indicates that “I bow my knees before the Father” (3:14) and that “I [am] a prisoner of the Lord” (4:1). In the closing he asks his readers to “Pray … for me that a word might be given me” (6:19); he indicates that “I am an ambassador in chains … that I might declare it boldly” (6:20); he states that his readers may now “know how I am and what I am doing” (6:21); and he lets them know that “I have sent him [Tychicus] to you” (6:22).

How can a commentator like E. Best claim that this author was not trying to deceive his readers into thinking that he was actually Paul?
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The author repeatedly goes out of his way to claim he was Paul. But he was not Paul. He was a follower of Paul, urging a non-Pauline set of theological views, writing later. Critics at the time would have labeled the book a
or a
—creating an obvious irony, given the stress on the importance of “truth” found throughout the book (1:13; 4:15, 21; 5:9). Particularly piquant are 4:25 (“let everyone speak the truth with his neighbor”) and 6:14 (“gird your loins with truth”), given the circumstances of the writing. Other critics have more sophisticated suggestions to absolve the author of his (from an ancient perspective) moral dilemma, but they too often appear to involve special pleading.
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The Letter to the Ephesians may seem less germane to the focus of this study than other texts we will be examining. Its purposes are not ostensibly polemical and there is no clear-cut opponent described in its exposition. It is principally a celebration of Christian “unity”: the unity of Jew and Gentile together in the body of Christ as the “mystery” that has been revealed (esp. 2:11–21) and the unity of both with God through the redemptive work of Christ (2:1–10). The paranetic section too stresses the importance of unity both in the Spirit (4:2–6) and in society (the Haustafel of 5:21–6:9, along with other exhortations). There are, course, many other themes and subthemes, a good deal of paranesis, and an attempt to “correct” views that the author finds inadequate (possibly, e.g., Gentile “boasting”). But polemic does not seem to be the dominant feature of the letter.

At the same time, even though “false teaching” is not the principal concern, it is—as with Colossians—an ongoing issue, as evidenced especially in the second half of the letter, as the readers are urged not to be carried away “with every wind of teaching by the cunning of others, by their craftiness in their wiles of deceit” (4:14); they are to “put away every lie” (4:25); they are to make sure that no one “deceive” them “with empty words”; and they are to gird their loins with truth (6:14). There is thus some concern about false teaching and wrong instruction, even if the content of the error is never brought to the level of expression. It is possible, obviously, that these exhortations are simply traditional language, in a letter that is more concerned with urging a unity in the body and to encourage its readers in their lives together.

There may be a case to be made, however, that the letter engages in a far subtler kind of polemic, as recently argued in an interesting article by Martin Hüneburg.
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Hüneburg points out that despite the fact that Ephesians was modeled on Colossians and contains, as a result, many of its salient themes, it differs in a significant respect that may suggest the author was not simply writing a letter for purposes of his own, but was trying to correct a misdirection being taken by its model. In particular Hüneburg notes that unlike its model, Ephesians makes explicit appeal to the Jewish scriptures in the context of its exhortations. When one reads Colossians carefully, in fact, without the blinders provided by the rest of the Pauline corpus, there is nothing to suggest that the exalted status of believers and the full benefits of salvation that they now enjoy are closely tied to anything like a “history of salvation.”

The historical Israel appears to be absent from Colossians, unlike Ephesians, where the historical people of Israel, and their Scriptures, figure prominently. In Ephesians, the body of Christ represents a reconciliation between “the commonwealth of Israel” with “you Gentiles in the flesh.” A new circumcision has been provided; an alienation has been overcome; those who were “strangers to
the promise” have now been brought into the fold through the blood of Christ, which has created “one new person in place of the two.” The stress on the historical connections between the body of Christ and the people of Israel in the opening exposition of Ephesians, especially of
chapter 2
, is matched by an appeal (also absent from its model) to the Jewish Scriptures throughout the paranetic section (e.g., 4:8, 25; 5:31; 6:2–3).

It is completely plausible that among the concerns of the author of Ephesians was the ahistorical view of salvation presented by his model, where the act of salvation brought by Christ received through the new existence effected in baptism had lost its roots in the history of salvation to Israel as related in the Scriptures. Colossians is in danger of moving into the direction of salvation without a history of salvation. But not Ephesians. Here the Gentiles have joined the commonwealth of Israel and been made heirs of the promise, all as part of God’s mysterious plan (not a new thing) for the salvation of the world.
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In short, Colossians was not merely a text to be imitated or a kind of Vorlage of Ephesians. It was a “Pauline” book that needed to be corrected and brought back into line. There is no “correction formula” here as one finds in 2 Thess. 2:2, possibly because the author of Ephesians saw Colossians as authentically, but dangerously, Pauline. He created a further close connection to his model through his reference to Tychicus in 6:21. But he extended its message by making the apostle now explain the economy of the salvation of Gentiles—the resurrected existence now already enjoyed by those who have been baptized into Christ—with reference to the larger salvation history of the people of God. If this view of the author’s concerns is right, then Ephesians can be seen as a kind of counterforgery, intending to correct the views of its predecessor—or at least the implications of those views—in the name of an apostle who in fact did not write either work.
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1
. Standhartinger and others have claimed that Colossians should be seen as our earliest Christian forgery, but there is really no way to date its appearance precisely, or even in relation to, say, 2 Thessalonians. See Angela Standhartinger,
Studien zur Entstehungsgeschichte und Intention des Kolosserbriefs
(“Leiden: Brill, 1999),
ch. 2
.

2
. On whether forgeries in Paul’s name could appear in his lifetime—an issue about which there really should be no debate—see p. 82.

3
. J. E. Chr. Schmidt, “Vermutungen über die beiden Briefe an die Thessalonicher,” in
Bibliothek für Kritik und Exegese des Neuen Testaments und älteste Christengeschichte
, vol. 2, fasc. 3 (Hadamar: In der neuen Gelehrten-Buchhandlung, 1801, pp. 383–84); the essay can be found in Wolfgang Trilling,
Untersuchungen zum 2. Thessalonicher
(Leipzig: St. Benno, 1972), pp. 159–61.

4
. “In jedem Falle bleibt es rätselhaft, warum er in dem Briefe die Erscheinung Christi als nahe beschrieb, in dem andern aber davor warnte, sie nicht als nahe zu erwarten.” As given in Trilling,
Untersuchungen
, p. 160.

5
. “Der Ankläger ist oft selbst der Schuldige, und klagt nur, um den Verdacht von sich abzuwälzen.”

6
. A. Hilgenfeld, “Die beiden Briefe an die Thessalonicher,’
ZWT
5 (1862): 225–64.

7
. H. J. Holtzmann,
Lehrbuch der historisch-kritischen Einleitung in das Neuen Testament
, 3rd ed. (Freiburg: J.C.B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1892), pp. 213–16.